The tiny clinking vials supervised by silent PPE-wearing technicians belie the excitement inside the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, a major player in the fight against coronavirus. The firm, founded in 1966 in the western city of Pune, is producing millions of doses of the Covishield vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, for India and much of the developing world. Unlike the rival Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Covishield can be stored and transported using standard refrigeration. Adar Poonawalla, its 40-year-old CEO, has spent nearly a billion dollars in recent years enlarging and improving the sprawling Pune campus. The Serum Institute also plans to supply 200 million doses to Covax, a World Health Organization-backed effort to procure and distribute inoculations to poor countries.

Source: The Guardian January 23, 2021 04:41 UTC